Asaf,
I have been asking my self why everybody thinks its Lugbara that is confusing
because one word means different things. The examples you have cited say it
all. A few others; the phrase "thank you" can be directed to one person, male
or female, many people. This only becomes clear when you are reporting i.e.
thanked her, him, them.
I think many languages have this phenomenon where one word or phrase has more
than one meaning.
ismail
----------------
________________________________
From: Asaf Adebua <asaf...@gmail.com>
To: A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile <westnilenet@kym.net>
Sent: Saturday, 27 April 2013, 9:56
Subject: Re: [WestNileNet] Learning the Lugbara Language - A bloggers 2 cents-a
good read!
A VERY LONG TICK TO YOU MAANDERA1
On 4/26/13, Maandera <ibmaand...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmmm. Before reading this article, I had read another blog about 4 years
> ago of an American also living in Arua and struggling to learn Lugbara.
> That one was less dramatic than this one. But I'd also heard of people
> saying Lugbara is a difficult language to learn. This had actually gotten
> me thinking: Can't you try to make learning Lugbara easier? I made an
> outline and soon foxed out, not with "After all the grapes are sour" but
> with a barrage of: "After all that is a relative statement. All languages
> are difficult to learn. Try a click language and tell me it is easy. Try
> the French which is spoken through the nose. . . etc, etc"
>
> Well, this blog got me updating my draft again based on some of the issues
> pointed out in it. I am not yet finished. What got me particularly thinking
> was how to best address the challenge of that apt comparison with Chinese -
> due to the tonality of the language and the fact that we have several
> dialects, which makes it a very rich and admittedly "confusing" language.
> Allow me another foxing: Who says English or Dutch is not confusing?
>
>
> As an English language teacher myself, I got loads of examples to which I
> have no explanation or justification apart from saying, "Sorry, but
> exceptions confirm the rule!" Why do the English for example say, the
> singular form of the verb *to-be* is "*is*" and yet when you meet one
> person (that is singular, for sure) you as "How *are* you?" as if there is
> more than one person you are talking to? And the English have the audacity
> to say that is "Correct English"! Don't tell me the word *wound* in the
> following sentence has one and only one meaning: The nurse *wound* the
> bandage around the *wound* of the *wounded* boy. And why should the plural
> of *box* be bo*xes* and the one of ox be "ox*en*" and not "ox*es*"? And why
> should a *driv**er* be a person, yet *cooker* is a thing for cooking and
> the person is a *Cook* and what the *cook* does is to *cook*? They also
> confuse us! But, that's the beauty and uniqueness of languages anyhow. The
> more reason why people learn languages.
>
>
> On a serious note: As many people have said, the article indeed made me see
> some things differently. For example, that Lugbara is a visual language.
> Hmmm. House-stomach! True, indeed. Visual and descriptive. That should make
> it even easier to learn. Common language teachers, let's do something to
> make this thing more palatable for those who want to get a different peek
> into our culture - through the language.
>
> The time keeping, I agree is something that is kind of "different" and
> often works against us. Not only the Lugbara but Ugandans. Did you read
> that article of the Teso youth protesting their MPs appearing at 6.30pm for
> a meeting that was scheduled for 3pm. My foot. We still have something to
> learn from the positive aspects of other cultures, which may enrich the
> positives in ours.
>
>
> Overall, it was some good food for thought and rib-breaking.
>
> Thank you George.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 7:56 AM, Santorino Data
> <boymuked...@yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>> Great piece of writing indeed.
>> This made my morning and now I understand why I spent 6 years in Arua and
>> still struggle to speak the language - confusion just that needs very
>> meticulous attention to detail and context even though I was from across
>> the Lugbara border in Kakwa land
>>
>>
>> *Dr. Data Santorino
>> **Lecturer Department of Pediatrics and Child Health
>> Mbarara University of Science and Technology
>> Uganda.*
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Anyole J <anyo...@yahoo.ca>
>> *To:* George Afi Obitre-Gama <gobi...@yahoo.com>; A Virtual Network for
>> friends of West Nile <westnilenet@kym.net>; A Virtual Network for friends
>> of West Nile <westnilenet@kym.net>
>> *Sent:* Thursday, April 25, 2013 7:21 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [WestNileNet] Learning the Lugbara Language - A bloggers 2
>> cents-a good read!
>>
>> This is a very interesting piece. It is always nice to see things from an
>> out-siders perspective and make sense of things we are usually oblivious
>> to, house-mouth, za-mva, et all!
>>
>> The piece does bring out some things that worry anthropologist too,
>> cultures are gradually getting eroded "traditions have been changing here
>> as the pressure of our Western culture pervades and invades." as well, it
>> high lights some issues that continue to plague us, such as time keeping,
>> which has itself not been eroded by the same western culture.
>>
>> Thanks for sharing this, it did make my day that more interesting, got me
>> thinking. One of these days, "I'll beat my vernacular teacher a phone"
>>
>> Anyole
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* George Afi Obitre-Gama <gobi...@yahoo.com>
>> *To:* A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile <westnilenet@kym.net>
>> *Sent:* Thursday, April 25, 2013 4:12:31 AM
>> *Subject:* [WestNileNet] Learning the Lugbara Language - A bloggers 2
>> cents-a good read!
>>
>> A new year, a new language, more
>> confusion<http://africraigs.travellerspoint.com/129/>
>> Why can't everyone speak English?
>> 16.01.2013 [image: sunny] 30 °C
>> Learning a new language and culture is like discovering a new world,
>> opening your eyes and mind to completely amazing and strange ideas, some
>> shocking, some fascinating, most unexpected.
>> Since the beginning of the new year, we have a new teacher, Eunice, who
>> is
>> hoping to make us into fluent Lugbara speakers within a few months…
>> Lugbara
>> is the local tribe in Arua, one of the 10 largest tribes in Uganda (out
>> of
>> a total of 34 ethnicities). The Lugbara are a tribe descended from
>> Nigeria to settle here. Their territory extends around Arua and into the
>> Democratic Republic of Congo, so families have been split by the
>> arbitrary
>> political boundaries drawn by the Europeans in Berlin in 1884.
>> Disconcertingly, we seem to be a source of great amusement for most of
>> the
>> ex-pats when we tell them we are taking this time to study Lugbara. “Good
>> luck”, they tell us. They then go on to tell you a story of someone who
>> has
>> been attempting the language for many years and haven’t gotten very far.
>> Some compare the language to Chinese, saying it is one of the most
>> difficult languages in the world to learn. It is quite depressing hearing
>> this, obviously… Additionally, having grown up in Congo and learning
>> Swahili there, having lived in Malawi and Kenya and trying to learn the
>> languages there, while being exposed to various other African languages,
>> it
>> is frustrating to have to start at zero like a baby once again….those
>> languages are nothing like Lugbara!
>> Most whites don’t even bother to learn Lugbara especially since this
>> tribe
>> is only one of 5 in the close vicinity of one another. For example, the
>> Alur are settled on the outskirts of Arua town. Their language is close
>> to
>> the Luo language which we were learning in Kenya. To make it even worse,
>> there are sub-sections of the Lugbara tribe with variations in the way
>> words are said. Whoopee to learning a difficult language which is only
>> spoken by a few and which is nothing like any other language we have ever
>> heard!
>> [image: Eunice, in action, confusing us]
>> Eunice, in action, confusing us
>>
>> Eunice is a good teacher, though, having patience with us as we sit on
>> the
>> veranda trying to repeat what on earth she has just said. As a Lugbara,
>> she
>> is also good at turning up late, demonstrating how a Lugbara should act.
>> As
>> Lilian, another Lugbara who works for us says, “Lugbaras is not following
>> time, ha!” and laughs out loud. So, anyway, she is almost an hour late
>> today, but since we live in Africa, you never know what may have
>> happened.
>> It could be a relative has just died and she has to go to the funeral.
>> Despite the issue of time-keeping, which especially bothers Emma, Eunice
>> has been effective at moving us on in the language. Emma and I already
>> feel
>> more confident using some simple phrases and greetings. For example, I
>> was
>> particularly proud when I asked for 10 eggs the other day in the local
>> wooden duka close to our home. “Ife mani augbe mundri”. The word for egg
>> 'augbe' is spoken as though you are swallowing an egg...
>> One of the problems of learning Lugbara is that the same words can mean
>> completely different things. So, for instance, the word for sauce,
>> “tibi”,
>> is the same word for ‘beard’, just with a different tone. Emma wonders if
>> this has anything to do with someone’s long beard dragging in their gravy
>> once upon a time. There are other examples, though the best so far is the
>> word ‘ago’, which if intonated differently, can either mean ‘husband’ or
>> ‘pumpkin’. A phrase like ‘my beautiful fiancée’ can also come across as
>> ‘my
>> beautiful warthog’, so any wannabe suitors need to be pretty careful in
>> this town…
>> Emma also uses a lot of imagination when it comes to remembering the
>> Lugbara phrases or words. So, for instance, the word for peanuts is
>> ‘funo’
>> (foon-oh). Emma thinks of little peanuts bouncing around and having a lot
>> of fun. It can be a bit of a tentative or weird link at times. She is
>> constantly whispering to me how I can remember a word. Awupi (A-whoopee)
>> is
>> the word for Aunt on your dad’s side. Obviously, this conjures up
>> thoughts
>> of playing a trick with my Auntie Barbara with a whoopee cushion…’Fetaa’
>> (feta) means gift and so it is remembered by thinking of giving someone a
>> gift of cheese. I often wish I had had Emma as a study partner for my
>> IGCSE
>> or IB exams in Holland as I would not have spent so many lost hours
>> staring
>> blankly at walls trying to cram boring information into my struggling
>> mind.
>> Alongside Emma's visual mind, we are also discovering that Lugbara is
>> quite a visual language. The word for ‘fingers’, for example, is
>> ‘hand-children’. This also works for ‘toes’ (foot children). The word for
>> door translates directly as ‘house-mouth’. The floor is the
>> ‘house-stomach’. Today, we learnt that veranda is the ‘joeti’ or ‘house
>> buttocks’!! You can’t make this stuff up, eh? It’s great!
>> Onomatopoeia is often used as well in the language. 'Kulukulu'
>> (koo-loo-koo-loo) is the name for a turkey and on hearing the sound a
>> turkey makes the other day when passing a homestead, I really thought it
>> described it well. Barking is ‘agbo-agbo’, crying is 'owu- owu' (oh-woo)
>> and laughing is 'ogu- ogu' (oh-goo). I can’t remember any of these sound
>> words properly and instead guess by making any noise that I think would
>> fit. It unfortunately doesn’t work. One of our favourite onomatopoeiatic
>> words is the word for butterfly ‘alapapa’, just like the sound of little
>> wings beating!
>> Language can also be an intimate doorway into the culture. We couldn’t
>> believe t, when Eunice explained the word for ‘girl’ is made up of 2
>> words
>> in Lugbara, ‘za’ meaning ‘meat’ and ‘mva’ meaning ‘child’! 'Meat-child!'
>> Girls have been seen as great little earners in a family by providing a
>> dowry of up to 20 head of cattle and 15 goats and extras like bows and
>> arrows and hoes.
>> However, so many of the traditions have been changing here as the
>> pressure
>> of our Western culture pervades and invades. Loin cloths have been out
>> since the 1950s or 60s (Maybe this is a good thing. I can’t see the Craig
>> family sauntering down the road semi-nude in Arua, and it would make an
>> embarrassing family photo). Instead, though, everyone is wearing
>> second-hand Western clothes. Out is the tradition to remove your 6 front
>> teeth using only a hammer and some herbs to encourage healing of your
>> mouth
>> afterwards (I’m also thankful this is not practised anymore), and marking
>> the skin by cuts with a razor in adolescence is now stopped. However, as
>> Eunice explained, the rather exaggerated buttocks size in women is still
>> favoured by the culture, especially if the buttocks also jiggles while
>> walking.
>> All-in-all, though pretty tiring, it is really interesting learning the
>> language and culture. It definitely does show how very different we
>> Westerners are (especially compared to the recent past) and so will help
>> us
>> understand how to approach people more effectively. We are hoping
>> knowledge of the language can help us build relationships and get
>> alongside people better (until we meet others from the next tribe along
>> who
>> don’t have a clue what we are saying…).
>> [image: Eunice, Lilian and all of us outside on the 'house-buttocks' in
>> the 'house-mouth']
>> Eunice, Lilian and all of us outside on the 'house-buttocks' in the
>> 'house-mouth'
>>
>> [image: Amelie in the jokoni]
>> Amelie in the jokoni
>>
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>
--
ASAF ADEBUA
DIRECTOR PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT GULU UNIVERSITY
P. O. 166 GULU (UGANDA)
TEL. +256 471 435850
CELL +256 772 503909
OFFICE MAIL a.ade...@gu.ac.ug
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